I want you to experience this ecstasy!  Yes, I'm listening all alone, at night, and getting things honed in for Decfest in October 2009!

I've been deep, deep, deep into the creation process working on a solution to the digital blues in the form of a Decware DAC to end all dacs.  Of course this started 7 years ago, and is now finally coming together in a mind numbing way that is presently exceeding my wildest expectations!

I simply can't wait until this years Decfest to debut this DAC in one of my favorite reference systems.  Imagine a pair of 6 inch full range drivers that are flat and healthy from 20Hz to 20kHz with a sensitivity of 95dB on a world class 5 watt amplifier being directly driven by this DAC and all I can say is that while test driving this system, I'm dumbfounded at what I'm hearing.  I've stumbled onto a way to make digital as satisfying as good analog and I never thought I'd ever hear myself say such a thing, but it's true.  Right now I could almost care less if I ever listen to an LP again.

Be sure to come and experience this with me at Decfest, OR if anyone wants to come between now and then (evenings only, you'll have to spend the night in a hotel (or in the listening room) and get the real treatment by having it all to yourself for the entire evening!!!  

The system demands to be heard.  I would say it's probably twice as good as the best most of us have ever heard, myself included.

God Bless

Steve

Can't wait to hear this Steve! I've gone through a dozen DACs and none come close to good vinyl. We are SO READY for it! What a long road....

Any more hints as to the topology? Non-oversampling... or what?

Naturally I find the idea of this exciting! Even if it were SOOO much better than existing digital playback, that in itself would be nice, indeed

As luck would have it, I still have many "can't live without 'em recordings" only available on vinyl. It's unlikely they could be home-digitized at such a quality that would surpass a good vinyl source as I believe the best sounding 16/44 cd's are downsampled from higher resolutions, no?

Every home-brew method I've ever heard that transfers vinyl to digital doesn't come close to a studio level transfer from the original master tape of the same recording.

So, whether I like it or not, vinyl is a permanent fixture stuck in my system, although I would really really like it if there were a dac that could slay vinyl.

I have some cd's that are sacd's, only (which do not contain a redbook layer). I'm assuming you'd have to live without these if the Decware dac plays 16/44, only, or would it be able to deal with sacd encoded data? Just curious, but probably not...?

Too bad Illinois is so far away from me (like the moon) as I'd love to visit and hear that thing.  :'(  

Cheers,
Karl

Steve: My equipment list below is that of a very simple 2ch. system.
What can I expect sonically by adding this DAC?
Thanks, Don

Steve,

Very, very exciting and interesting .....

As many readers of the forum know, I have owned some very nice DACs including the $10,000.00 Zanden 5000.  It was really good, but IMHO not worlds better than the most recent Camelot Uther.

Much to my disappointment, it was also not as good in an absolute sense as any decent, modestly priced analog rig ..... although for my purposes and listening habits I have continued to enjoy my digital only system with the Decware ZCD doing a very respectable job of putting music in my room.

Many recently released CDs can sound quite good ..... one example being CDs on the German Stockfisch label.  They do not suffer from the "digititus" that afflicts many CDs produced by the larger popular labels.

My biggest complaint has always been with the CDs of some of the best music originally released on vinyl during the 60s, 70s and 80s.

When listening to many of them, you get the feeling that the record companies had the attitude of "just get the music on the little silver disks and out the door ..... don't worry about how it sounds" .....

Some of the music I love most ..... such as Pure Prairie League's "Bustin' Out" is an absolute atrocity on CD and I have never heard it sound good on any system ..... while the LP sounds just fine on a very modest analog system.  The bass on the CD sounds like it has been stripped out and the upper mids and treble are cold and sterile.  This balance is pretty common on many of the CD releases of music from this era.

It will be interesting to see what the new Decware DAC can do for disks like that ..... but if it can just bring the "middle of the road quality" CDs up to the level of decent analog it will be a major advance for the audio hobby .....    

I just may see a road trip to Peoria in my near future .....

Regards,

Randy

its been a long time since i posted, but my most recent audio epiffany is the importance of pre amps and dacs.

can you make a 12v version of these steve?

hundreds of serious car audio people globally would buy it.

Hmmm,

Well I sympathize with your skepticism, Michkhol, as I'm also a skeptic, especially when it comes to the comparison of analog and digital playback.

In fact, although I'm skeptical of my own skepticism... shucks, forgot what I was even trying to say.

OTOH, this sounds like a really interesting DAC project that Steve is into, and I have a lot of interest in how it turns out.

I wish I were a little closer to Peoria, as I'd love to cop a listen....

Karl

Thx for being my personal shopper, Don!

Karl